Khârn: Eater of Worlds

by Anthony Reynolds

  Skoral remembered a time when the warriors of the Legion greeted each other in the old manner – wrist-to-wrist – but that custom was all but dead now. It was not just the mortal servants of the Legion who trod softly around their masters; the World Eaters themselves eyed each other warily whenever another came near.

  The bonds of brotherhood were still intact, for now, but they were frayed. No World Eater was comfortable being in close proximity to his kin. Brond and Dreagher were about as close to friends as Skoral had seen within the Legion, but they were cautious around each other nonetheless.

  Brond was garbed for war, as ever. Over his worn, blood-red battleplate hung a cloak of chainmail, and a massive executioner’s axe was strapped across his back. At his hips were a pair of scabbarded power swords. Their blades were short and wide, tipped with wicked, forward-jutting spikes.

  ‘Apprise me,’ growled Dreagher.

  ‘Two of yours,’ said Brond, indicating behind him with a movement of his head, though he did not take his gaze off Dreagher. ‘An hour dead.’

  ‘Who are they?’ he said.

  ‘One of them is Saal. The other… I can’t tell,’ said Brond.

  Dreagher spat a curse. ‘There are few enough of us left as it is,’ Dreagher snarled. ‘The Legion is weakened with every death.’

  Brond shrugged. ‘Without an enemy to kill, we kill each other,’ he said.

  Dreagher shook his head. ‘It cannot continue.’

  ‘I see you’ve brought your pet Apothecary,’ said Brond, his gaze switching to Skoral.

  She bristled at the derision in his voice, but lowered her gaze submissively and tried not to let her anger show. Not that it would matter; most of the Legion were unable to read the body language of lesser beings.

  While masterful in so many ways, reading human emotions was one area where their skills were noticeably lacking. Her hypothesis was that it was probably something never considered in their creation. They were made to be the perfect warriors, not diplomats or politicians; what need had they to be able to connect on an emotional level with base humans?

  ‘We must continue to harvest the dead,’ said Dreagher. ‘Without the gene-banks, the Legion has no future.’

  ‘I do not see us replenishing our ranks any time soon,’ said Brond, bitterness tingeing his words.

  ‘A time will come when we are able to rebuild, brother,’ said Dreagher. ‘We are wounded, sorely wounded, but we will rise again.’

  ‘I hope you are right, Dreagher,’ said Brond, ‘but there are those who believe that is just a dream. That the Legion is already in its death throes.’

  ‘They are wrong,’ said Dreagher. ‘It will only die if we allow it. Where are the bodies?’

  ‘Back here,’ said Brond, stepping aside and gesturing up one of the darkened service corridors.

  The two captains fell in beside each other, leaving Skoral and Maven to follow close behind. They exchanged a glance.

  A circle of World Eaters stood around the corpses. The onlookers were legionaries of Brond’s 17th Company, all garbed in red like their master, in stark contrast to Dreagher’s blue and white of the old Legion.

  None of them appeared particularly moved by the loss of their warrior brothers, lying sprawled upon the deck floor, covered in dried blood. Skoral was not surprised. The Nails robbed the World Eaters of what little humanity was left in them.

  Skoral slipped between the towering giants, and knelt before the bodies. The stink was appalling, but she was used to that. Legion blood smelt different from human blood – it was richer and had a harsher metallic tang to it. They were a breed apart, after all.

  She recognised Saal. His face was grey and spattered with dried, flaking blood, but his lipless features were unmistakable, still curled in their perpetual snarl. He was one that Skoral had always been wary of; she was not upset to see him dead.

  His throat was a mass of torn tissue and blood, the wound so savage and deep that the vertebrae were visible. It wasn’t his only wound; there were three punctures in his breastplate over his twin hearts. Those were the wounds that killed him.

  She turned her attention to the other body.

  Its face was a sunken, bloody crater, making facial identification impossible. The front of the skull was completely caved in; the force necessary to do this to a legionary skull was immense.

  Added to that, the Space Marine’s abdomen had been viciously ripped open. That wound was jagged and messy, the meat shredded and hanging in mutilated chunks, like mincemeat. Skoral knew that kind of wound well. Chainblade.

  It looked like the work of a rabid beast. That was nothing unusual; indeed, it was expected – the XII was a Legion of rabid beasts.

  Her gaze settled on a trio of brass and bone totemic fetishes that hung from a length of leather wrapped around the dead warrior’s left wrist. They were highly stylised skulls; the symbol of the Blood Father. She looked up at Dreagher.

  ‘This is Khrast,’ she said.

  Dreagher’s face darkened, flushing with anger and frustration as he saw that she was correct. He barked a curse in Nagrakali, the sound harsh and clipped.

  ‘He was a good warrior,’ said Brond. ‘A good lieutenant.’

  ‘He survived Arrigata, Isstvan, Terra… only to die here to one of his own brothers,’ said Dreagher. He laughed then. The sound was ugly, harsh and utterly devoid of humour.

  ‘He died in battle,’ said Brond, gesturing at the pair of corpses. ‘They both did. It’s a good death. It’s as much as any of us could hope for.’

  ‘They did not kill each other,’ said Dreagher. ‘Saal could never have taken Khrast.’

  ‘Perhaps he got lucky,’ said Brond. Even to Skoral’s ear, it didn’t sound as if he believed it.

  ‘You saw him in the pits,’ said Dreagher. ‘You’ve seen him in battle. No, these two didn’t kill each other. They were squad brothers. They died together. They were fighting someone else.’

  Skoral was inspecting the wounds at Saal’s neck, probing the dead flesh.

  ‘The injuries sustained support that,’ she said. ‘I don’t think these two did kill each other.’

  Dreagher and Brond stared at each other for a long moment, until Brond conceded, nodding his head.

  ‘Ruokh,’ said Brond, his voice low. ‘That’s what you are thinking.’

  ‘Tell me you believe otherwise. Who else could take Khrast? Let alone Khrast and Saal together?’

  Brond shrugged.

  Dreagher opened up a comms channel, speaking into the pick-up on the inside of his gorget.

  ‘Ruokh, this is Dreagher,’ he said, his voice tinged with anger. ‘Give me your current location.’

  Silence was the only response.

  ‘Ruokh, brother, answer me. Your current location – what is it?’

  Nothing. Dreagher swore again.

  ‘The Blood Priest felt this was Ruokh’s doing as well,’ said Brond.

  Skoral looked up in alarm.

  ‘What?’ said Dreagher, his head snapping around to lock on to Brond. ‘Baruda knows of this?’

  Brond nodded. ‘He was here. What is the issue?’

  ‘Baruda and Khrast were as brothers,’ snarled Dreagher. ‘They ran together on Bodt, and came through the Bloodtrials together. He will be seeking recompense – he will be looking for blood. We need to find Ruokh before he does.’

  Brond nodded. ‘The 17th will join the hunt.’

  Dreagher glanced down at Skoral.

  ‘Deal with the bodies,’ he said. She nodded, and Dreagher turned away, barking orders.

  The other World Eaters drifted away, moving to secure the area and joining the search for Ruokh. She was left alone with the corpses.

  ‘By the gods, you stink,’ she said to the corpse of Saal.

  With a sigh, she lay the narthecium on its sid
e and removed her combat jacket. She folded it and placed it far enough away that it wouldn’t get bloody. Then she knelt and set to work.

  Nurtured within the flesh of every Space Marine were two progenoid glands, the repositories of the genetic building blocks needed to create more of their kind. The first of these glands, nestled in the throat, grew to maturation in half a decade. Skoral turned the mutilated legionary’s head to one side, pressing her fingers against his skin. It was still warm.

  As she’d expected, the gland there had already been removed. The dead warrior was no neophyte. The Legion had no neophytes, not any more. They were all veterans now – those of them left alive after Terra and the slow bleeding of the Legion since.

  The chest-gland, however, was only removed after death.

  The narthecium’s reductor was designed to cut through Space Marine armour and hardened Legiones Astartes bone to retrieve the precious gene-seed. In this case, the arduous task was made easier by the sickening wound in the dead World Eater’s gut.

  Skoral opened the wound further, cutting a neat slice upwards until the narthecium’s saw began chewing at the corpse’s sternum. Hefting the heavy Apothecary’s tool to her shoulder, she took a breath and wiped a splatter of blood from her face, before gripping it tightly with both hands once more and bracing herself.

  Grimacing, Skoral drove the narthecium into the gaping stomach cavity, burying it in the steaming flesh. She grunted as she pressed it upwards under the ribcage. She revved the saw blade, grinding through muscle tissue, pressing deeper.

  She used the green-glowing data screen to guide her, navigating past organs that no human was born with. After a few failed attempts, each of which required her to pull the narthecium’s questing probes back before pressing deeper into the Space Marine’s body cavity, she found what she was looking for. On the data screen it looked like a bulbous tumour.

  Once in position, she squeezed a trigger mechanism. The narthecium jolted and there was a tearing sound as the globular organ was extracted. A wet splatch followed as the reductor deposited the progenoid within one of the medicae canisters in the back of the narthecium’s armoured housing.

  It didn’t look like much, little more than a veined, bloody lump hung with stringy sinew and muscle. Nevertheless, it held the key to the Legion’s future – if it had one.

  On that point, Skoral was becoming increasingly doubtful.

  Egil Galerius moved like a dancer, each step in perfect balance, each movement flowing into the next without pause. Each strike was executed to deliver a perfect killing blow.

  Galerius was of the III Legion, the exalted Emperor’s Children. Seventh Millennial, Third Tactical. His skin was the white of flawless marble. His hair, cropped short, was similarly devoid of colour. His eyes, however, were a startling shade of violet. They had an intensity of colour to them that was as brilliant and sharp as finely cut amethyst.

  Perfection. Killing perfection. That was what he strove for. That was what consumed him. It was the ideal that he trained his body and mind incessantly to achieve.

  His features were angular and refined, invested with a haughty pride often read by those outside the III Legion as arrogance. His face was unmarked by scar or blemish, except around his mouth and chin.

  A pair of thin pink scars stretched straight out from the corners of his mouth to a point just below his ears, at the base of his jawline. Another two extended down from a point where they met at the very centre of his bottom lip, cutting down over his chin at an acute angle, finishing on his neck to either side of his throat.

  These were not scars earned in battle. These cuts were purposeful. Galerius had willingly allowed them to be made. Fabius Bile had performed the operation himself, honouring Galerius with the masterful touch of his scalpel. The Apothecary was a true artist. His flesh-work was sublime.

  Galerius was garbed in a long, flowing tabard, the material coarse and undyed. It was not something that a member of the Brotherhood of Palatine Blades would normally deign to wear, but these were unusual times. He was alone, cut off from his beloved Legion, a refugee in a hive of savagery and barbarism. This was the best that he had.

  He moved slowly, ensuring every strike, parry, thrust and step was precise, his body in absolute balance, completely in control of his every muscle movement. His breathing was similarly controlled. He used his breath to enhance the focus of his strikes and the ease of his movement.

  His bare, alabaster arms were covered in small, criss-crossing cuts. Some were recent, the wounds bright and fresh, the blood newly congealed. Others were older. Pale scars underneath spoke of this not being a new vice. They were artful, these slices, following the contours of his muscles. To a certain taste they were aesthetic, these delicate blade-marks, as was the pain of their creation. Among the ranks of the Emperor’s Children, such a thing was the very least of the practices that others might call deviance.

  Galerius turned, rotating smoothly on the balls of his bare feet, and brought his sword, the exemplar blade Argentus, around in a slow, two-handed killing strike.

  The sword was an exquisite work of art, forged to Galerius’s exact specifications on Chemos by one of the III Legion’s finest sword smiths. The slender blade was like liquid silver, with the slightest blue tinge to its sheen, and its golden hilt was fashioned in the likeness of a resplendent phoenix. Gently tapering to a narrow point, even without its power core activated its blade was able to cut through the finest steel. Activated, it could carve through adamantium and ceramite like a knife through water.

  Lowering his weight, he continued the flow of his strike, slowly arching backwards as he twisted his body the way it had turned, rolling his shoulders to bring Argentus around in a new, flashing arc. His neck followed the serpentine unfurling of his spine, extending his head back so that he was looking at the floor, mimicking the movement of flowing under an enemy strike.

  Smoothly, his body and mind in perfect symmetry, he rolled his shoulder back around in a new strike. His spine straightened once more, as if carving the legs from a new enemy, then spinning lightly, turning, lowering one hand to the ground, striking behind him with a reverse, one-handed thrust that would have impaled an enemy rushing him from his blind side.

  Argentus sliced the air in a gleaming arc as Galerius rose, turning and bringing the blade down in a powerful two-handed slash that would have cut an enemy in two, from collarbone to hip.

  It was a sinuous, deadly dance that he weaved. His style of swordplay was so far removed from the killing ways of the World Eaters as to be almost laughable.

  Where he was precise, focused and disciplined, they were wild, uncontrollable, a rabble. If he were a hunting falcon – elegant and controlled, striking hard and with absolute precision – then the World Eaters were blood-maddened, rabid dogs let loose off the leash, biting and ripping at anything that moved, and snapping at each other when they had no identifiable enemy.

  Of course, he would never let his hosts register his contempt. That would be tantamount to suicide. And in truth it was hard to argue with their way of war. They were unsubtle, unrefined savages, but they were brutally, brutally effective. When the World Eaters went to war, nothing was left alive.

  He was no officer, but they had given him his own quarters, crude and spartan as they were. He was thankful to have his own space to rest and train in. A place to escape to.

  He completed his training regimen and knelt, sheathing the falchion Argentus in its decorative, golden scabbard. He placed the weapon reverently upon a shelf and turned, shrugging off his tabard. Every inch of his snow-white skin was covered in cuts or the ghosts of cuts. The plugs and sockets embedded in his flesh where his power armour bonded to him stood out starkly, the black metal further enhancing the pallid nature of his flesh.

  His armour hung upon his arming rack. He crossed his cell and stood before it. The heavy, rich purple plate, polished to a mirror
sheen, was edged in gold and covered in intricate filigree. His left shoulder plate, couter, vambrace and gauntlet were plated in platinum, an honour unique to the Palatine Blades. He reached out to the Legion heraldry emblazoned on his left shoulder plate, and traced the outline of the golden eagle. It felt cold.

  He transferred his gaze to his helm, with its golden Phoenician-pattern faceplate. It stared back at him, lifeless and inert. He could see his distorted reflection mirrored in its visor lenses. Their curve made him look grotesque. His reflected appearance was made more distorted still as his lips peeled back along the lines of the pink scars on his face, the flesh of his lower face folding back like the petals of a flower.

  He heard heavy footfalls in the corridor outside his cell, and the flesh of his face slapped back into place.

  Galerius was tolerated by the legionaries of the XII, but there was little warmth or camaraderie between them. There was a simmering undercurrent of aggression and barely suppressed rage in the XII Legion that frequently roared to the surface. His presence seemed to aggravate them, and so he avoided them as best he could. Many were openly hostile.

  Only the captain, Dreagher, had shown him anything more than the barest of civility. It had been Dreagher that had dragged him from beneath the shadow of the palatial walls on Terra, his armour a sundered ruin from the guns of the Imperial Fists. He had a certain barbaric honour about him, the captain.

  Dreagher came to him on occasion, and they spoke of simple matters; battle tactics and fighting techniques, mostly. The captain’s accented Gothic was thick and guttural. Amongst themselves, the XII Legion largely spoke their mongrel tongue Nagrakali. It was an ugly, simplistic language.

  Much to Galerius’s surprise, he’d come to look forward to those moments when Dreagher came to him. A certain mutual respect had grown between the two of them.

  More heavy footfalls in the corridor outside. Intriguing.

  Galerius reached for his armour.

  It had not always been like this, thought Dreagher, as he scoured the endless corridors of the Defiant. Once, there had been hope.